President Obama & the GOP: Obama-Care If You Dare!

President Obama ran his presidency campaign on the ticket of “Change” and he won, twice, because that is what Americans said they wanted. In fact, we the people are constantly obsessing over the mere notion of how we want “Change”. Moreover, for over half a century it has been the claims of many psychologists that change has become the steady state of the contemporary American culture.

On the other hand, in general the psychology literature often describes how a standard or even natural reaction to change is…Resistance, but why? According to the article, Overcoming Resistance to Change: TheTop Ten Reasons for Change Resistance, written by A. J. Schuler, Psy. D. the following is true.

THE RISK OF CHANGE IS SEEN AS GREATER THAN THE RISK OF STANDING STILL:

2. PEOPLE FEEL CONNECTED TO OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE IDENTIFIED WITH THE OLD WAY
3. PEOPLE HAVE NO ROLE MODELS FOR THE NEW ACTIVITY
4. PEOPLE FEAR THEY LACK THE COMPETENCE TO CHANGE
5. PEOPLE FEEL OVERLOADED AND OVERWHELMED
6. PEOPLE HAVE A HEALTHY SKEPTICISM AND WANT TO BE SURE NEW IDEAS ARE SOUND
7. PEOPLE FEAR HIDDEN AGENDAS AMONG WOULD-BE REFORMERS
8. PEOPLE FEEL THE PROPOSED CHANGE THREATENS THEIR NOTIONS OF THEMSELVES
9. PEOPLE ANTICIPATE A LOSS OF STATUS OR QUALITY OF LIFE
10. PEOPLE GENUINELY BELIEVE THAT THE PROPOSED CHANGE IS A BAD ID

Ok, and so it is that I have purposefully stayed out of writing anything major about the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) aka Obamacare. However, as an outsider is to a gang war, sometimes one gets caught up in the crossfire.

It could be said that the Affordable Health Care Act(AHCA), or the saga of it (if you will) plays out more like a bitter divorce with the GOP acting as the scorned ex and the Obama administration playing the role of the pro temp judge who just ruled in favor of the ex’s spouse. Now I once read a scolding comment from a person who reprimanded me and said my analogies are so harsh and I must be nicer to our politicians (but not in those nice words, in fact he or she had a choice few). I took such a limited comment in stride. I cared not that he or she was rebuking me but more that the articles “changed [their] point of view regarding the struggles of politicians”.

Why am I telling you this? Because it illustrates how change meets resistance. Although the aforementioned person would later thank me for many more articles (as if I had somehow accommodated them) I really wrote my analogies from the same place as before. He or she at some moment in time had simple adjusted to my writing style.

The questions is, are we all really fighting over the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) and its idiosyncrasies or does this act like our President represent another form of change?

I leave you with this quote from my late grandmother, she said, “Do you want to be the change you see in the world? Or do you want to observe the changes being made, to what you want to see in the world? (I answered her by saying; I wanted to be the change thinking she would be proud of me. Instead she said, “Well I hope your back is strong because it is going to have to take a lot of whippings”).